His anti-semitism czar blasts Israel first!!!

The State Department vs. the Israeli Ambassador

24 Dec 2009 02:25 pm

You can't make this stuff up. The new State Department anti-Semtism czar (you didn't know such a thing existed?), Hannah Rosenthal, publicly criticized the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, for criticizing J Street, the left-leaning Jewish lobbying group:

Remarks by Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, against the liberal Jewish lobby J Street were "most unfortunate" according to Hannah Rosenthal, head of the U.S. administration's Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

Talk about sticking your nose in places where it doesn't belong. The Obama Administration official charged with monitoring worldwide anti-Semitism makes her first target... the Israeli ambassador to the United States? I'll be taking bets now on how long Hannah Rosenthal lasts in the job.

http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/12/the_state_department_vs_the_is.php

Obma worst first year ever of any president

The President Is No B+
In fact, he's got the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year.



By KARL ROVE

Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.

There are many factors that explain it, including weakness abroad, an unprecedented spending binge at home, and making a perfectly awful health-care plan his signature domestic initiative. But something else is happening.

Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics—free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin—was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.

Consider Mr. Obama's comment in his interview this past Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes" that the Bush administration made a mistake in speaking in "a triumphant sense about war."

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Rove
Associated Press
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Rove

This was a slap at every president who rallied the nation in dark moments, including Franklin D. Roosevelt ("With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph"); Woodrow Wilson ("Right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts"); and John F. Kennedy ("Any hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed . . . will be met by whatever action is needed").

This kind of attack gives Mr. Obama's words a slippery quality. For example, he voted for the bank rescue plan in September 2008 and praised it during the campaign. Yet on Dec. 8 at the Brookings Institution, Mr. Obama called it "flawed" and blamed "the last administration" for launching it "hastily."

Really? Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner designed it. If it was "flawed," why did Mr. Obama later nominate Mr. Bernanke to a second term as Fed chairman and make Mr. Geithner his Treasury secretary?

Mr. Obama also claimed at Brookings that he prevented "a second Great Depression" by confronting the financial crisis "largely without the help" of Republicans. Yet his own Treasury secretary suggests otherwise. In a Dec. 9 letter, Mr. Geithner admitted that since taking office, the Obama administration had "committed about $7 billion to banks, much of which went to small institutions." That compares to $240 billion the Bush administration lent banks. Does Mr. Obama really believe his additional $7 billion forestalled "the potential collapse of our financial system"?
About Karl Rove

Karl Rove served as Senior Advisor to President George W. Bush from 2000–2007 and Deputy Chief of Staff from 2004–2007. At the White House he oversaw the Offices of Strategic Initiatives, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Intergovernmental Affairs and was Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, coordinating the White House policy-making process.

Before Karl became known as "The Architect" of President Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, he was president of Karl Rove + Company, an Austin-based public affairs firm that worked for Republican candidates, nonpartisan causes, and nonprofit groups. His clients included over 75 Republican U.S. Senate, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates in 24 states, as well as the Moderate Party of Sweden.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).

Email the author atKarl@Rove.comor visit him on the web atRove.com. Or, you can send a Tweet to @karlrove.

Mr. Obama continued distorting the record in his "60 Minutes" interview Sunday when he blamed bankers for the financial crisis. They "caused the problem," he insisted before complaining, "I haven't seen a lot of shame on their part" and pledging to put "a regulatory system in place that prevents them from putting us in this kind of pickle again."

But as a freshman senator, Mr. Obama supported a threatened 2005 filibuster of a bill regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He doesn't show "a lot of shame" that he and other Fannie and Freddie defenders blocked "a regulatory system" that might have kept America from getting in such a bad pickle in the first place.

The president's rhetorical tricks don't end there. Mr. Obama also claimed his $787 billion stimulus package "helped us [stem] the panic and get the economy growing again." But 1.5 million more people are unemployed than he said there would be if nothing were done.

And as of yesterday, only $244 billion of the stimulus had been spent. Why was $787 billion needed when less than a third of that figure supposedly got the job done?

Mr. Obama also alleged on "60 Minutes" that health-care reform "will actually bring down the deficit" (which people clearly know it will not). He said his reform reduces "costs and premiums for American families and businesses" (though they will be higher than they would otherwise be). And he claimed 30 million more people will get coverage through "an exchange that allows individuals and small businesses" to purchase insurance (though 15 million of them are covered by being dumped into Medicaid and don't get private insurance).

Mr. Obama may actually believe it when he says, "I think that's a pretty darned good outcome" and congratulates himself that he could succeed where "seven presidents have tried . . . [and] seven presidents have failed."

But voters seem to have a different definition of success. And they are tiring of the president's blame shifting and distortions.

Mr. Obama may believe, as he told Oprah Winfrey in a recent interview, that he deserves a "solid B+" for his first year in office, but the American people beg to differ. A presidency that started with so much promise is receiving unprecedentedly low grades from the country that elected him. He's earned them.

Mr. Rove, the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, is the author of the forthcoming book "Courage and Consequence" (Threshold Editions).

Idiotic timetable for Afganistan

Afghans and Pakistanis Concerned Over U.S. Plan


By SABRINA TAVERNISE and CARLOTTA GALL
Published: December 2, 2009


Many in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, argued that the short timetable diminished any incentive for Pakistan to cut ties to Taliban militants who were its allies in the past, and whom Pakistan might want to use to shape a friendly government in Afghanistan after the American withdrawal.

Obma care falling in polls WSJ

*
* DECEMBER 11, 2009

ObamaCare Keeps Falling in the Polls


By JOHN FUND


Opponents of ObamaCare will be aided by polls showing that it is even less popular than HillaryCare was a year into the Clinton presidency. Back in December 1993, Gallup found that 47% of voters backed HillaryCare, with 32% opposed. Today, an average of health-care surveys at Pollster.com shows support for ObamaCare at 38.8%, with 51.4% against...

That legislation only passed 220 to 215. There will be new pressures on members for a second vote. Louisiana Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, the lone Republican to vote for the bill, may not be able to support it again without strong limits on funding abortions—and several Democrats might feel compelled to join him.

Meanwhile, the new Quinnipiac poll reports that 63% of Americans believe covering the uninsured will increase their own costs, and that includes 44% of Democrats. Voters by 48% to 46% believe extending coverage to the uninsured would decrease the quality of their own care—including a majority of independents and 26% of Democrats. A full 74% of people don't believe the president's claim that health reform won't add to the deficit, including 53% of Democrats.

There is also the issue of jobs. The unemployment rate is 10% and a new study by the National Federation of Independent Business estimates that mandating that employers provide health care will cost 1.6 million jobs by 2013.

These are all potent issues if TV ads and grass-roots activism can be directed into the districts of House Democrats vulnerable to defeat in 2010. Fourteen Blue Dog Democrats who voted to pass health-care reform last month represent districts rated as leaning Republican by the Cook Political Report. Another nine Democrats hail from districts that are only slightly Democratic. Pressure will be put on the 39 Democrats who voted no the first time to switch their vote, but they will be hard to budge. There are enough votes among the three groups to make it agonizingly difficult to pass health care a second time.

Speaker Pelosi has told her members that health-care reform is so important she is willing to lose 20 seats next year if that is what it takes to get it. Polls showing Republicans leading in the generic vote for Congress make some Democrats worry that she is seriously lowballing the risk. She may not mind if some members lose their seats, especially if they are moderates who are possible future votes against her in a leadership contest. The Blue Dogs who are the subject of her political science experiment may decide they'd rather not be her guinea pigs.
—Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com

Obma weakening us vis a vis Soviet nuks too

The Disarmament President
Obama's boffo Oslo speech versus the real nuclear world.

WSJ Dec 11
Let's take those in order. The U.S. looks likely to agree to cut the number of permitted delivery vehicles, such as missiles, long-range bombers and submarines, by half, to 800 or less. This is to Russia's advantage, which as of last spring had 814—and not all of them in working condition. Many of America's 1,198 nuclear delivery vehicles—from B-2 bombers to ICBMs—are being fitted with conventional weapons. The ceilings in a new Start would likely make no distinction between bomb types. If the goal is to move away from nukes, why limit the military's capacity to deploy conventional weapons?

As for verification, with fewer allowable warheads, Ronald Reagan's "trust but verify" maxim applies more than ever. Yet Russia wants to reduce oversight, and it specifically told the U.S. that continuous monitoring at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant would end once Start expired. The Russians are building new RS-24 mobile nuclear missiles at Votkinsk. According to one Russian general, the RS-24 will by 2016 constitute four-fifths of its ICBM forces. Without monitoring, the U.S. won't know for sure how many of these missiles the Russians make and where they are deployed.

While Russia invests in new warheads and missiles, the Obama Administration has yet to lay out its own plans for updating the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Even staunch proponents of arms control concede that to be able to reduce the quantity of U.S. arms, we have to improve the quality. The Senate should ask why the White House isn't.

The Russians also refused to discuss their huge advantage in tactical weapons, and the Administration said OK. After the July "framework agreement," Russia signalled that U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic stood in the way of a final deal. Mr. Obama obliged, informing the Poles and Czechs of his reduced defenses late on the day before the sixth round of Start talks in Geneva. The announcement pleased the Russians, though it still hasn't got Washington a deal. Stay tuned for more concessions as U.S. negotiators try to get it before the year's end.

Meanwhile, the world's rogues continue to pursue nuclear weapons, and Mr. Obama said yesterday that "it is incumbent upon all of us to insist that nations like Iran and North Korea do not game the system." He added that "we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior." But all the President has to show for a year of courting these regimes is their refusal even to consider giving up either their weapons (North Korea) or their growing capacity to make them (Iran).

The French, for one, see this danger plainly and want the U.S. to press harder on Tehran. But on these hard cases, the Administration can't muster the same sense of urgency it is bringing to the cause of an unnecessary arms control pact with Russia. Mr. Obama is right that he still has to earn that Nobel.

He is not the one to fight this war

December 3, 2009 4:00 AM

The War for 21st-Century Freedom
The Islamists are fighting for control of the world. We need a president who knows it.

By Barbara Lerner
Are you worried — like so many Americans after the Fort Hood massacre — about the growing threat of Islamist subversion and terror here at home? Worried, beyond that, about what we’re doing — or not doing — militarily in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq? Worried about the growing reach and power of Islamist movements in Europe and South America, as well as Asia, the Middle East, and Turkey? Worried about the military alliances Islamist governments are forging with their secular mirror images: socialist-god governments in places like North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela?

Then focus like a laser on Iran, now, because Islamists will score major victories in all those places and more if we fail to prevent the ruling mullahs from openly, triumphantly making Iran the world’s first Islamist nuclear power. The danger isn’t only Iran’s own catastrophic recklessness, once she gets the bomb, or the fact that all her Arab neighbors will respond by scrambling to go nuclear too. It’s also that Islamists everywhere — joined by growing masses of previously undecided Muslims — will see Iran’s success in achieving nuclear status the way Iran’s mullahs see it: as a historic defeat for the West, blasting open the gate to a 21st-century world where Islam rules and Christians, Jews, Hindus, and Buddhists are subservient or worse. Islamist ranks will swell, everywhere, as confidence grows that the Islamist side is the winning side, and victory is near.






THE WAR WE MUST WIN
Most Americans can scarcely imagine an Islamist-ruled world. Most Muslims can, and they respond in one of three ways. Moderate Muslims wholeheartedly reject the Islamist vision and the support for jihad that is inseparable from it; Muslim extremists embrace it, many with growing fervor; and a third group sits on the fence, waiting and watching. Constant politically correct reassurances that only a minority of the world’s Muslims support violence against us are based on the fantasy that only “Islamist extremists” do that; “moderate Islamists” don’t. In fact, there is no such thing as a “moderate Islamist.” All Islamists are extremists. It’s an extreme creed. Moderate Muslims do exist, millions of them, many bravely fighting against the rising Islamist tide, but they aren’t “moderate Islamists.” Moderate Muslims are anti-Islamist Muslims, who oppose the imposition of Sharia and all the oppressive baggage that comes with it. They are on our side — freedom’s side — and we should be on theirs. Instead, we mostly ignore them and fail to heed their warnings, reaching out to “moderate Islamists” instead, welcoming them into our critical institutions — as our military, aided by the FBI, welcomed Major Hasan.

When it comes to Islamists abroad, poll data make it clear that they are the overwhelming majority in the Middle East. Iran and Turkey were the two great Middle Eastern exceptions, as Islamism swamped competing ideologies in all the Arab lands. Iran may still be, if popular majorities in that once great nation were allowed free choice, but they are governed by an Islamist regime more despotic than any Persian shah, ancient or modern. Turkey, once the freest, most proudly westernized and progressive country of them all, is on the verge of the same sorry fate. If you doubt that, look again at the new Turkey, governed by an Islamist party since 2002, a Turkey that is right now preparing to embrace Iran.

Focus like a laser on Iran now, because we have only months — not years — to prevent Iran from blasting through that history-making gate. Don’t waste precious time on the pretense that negotiations and/or sanctions can save us. As John Bolton, Michael Ledeen, Rich Lowry, Andrew McCarthy, and a few other brave souls keep pointing out, we have been negotiating with Islamist Iran for 30 years now, offering the mullahs one sweet deal after another, and getting blow after blow in return. Even if — mirabile dictu — Iran signed an agreement promising to forgo nuclear weapons forever, it would be worth no more than the 1938 Munich agreement. Iran’s mullahs are fanatics, like Hitler, not rational criminals we can make a deal with, as we did with the Soviets. MAD — mutual assured destruction — worked, because the Russians weren’t mad.

As for sanctions, if there ever was a chance they could have worked, even in their most robust form — a complete blockade of Iran’s ports by America and the few allies who might have joined us — that chance is long gone…
WHY WE AREN’T FIGHTING TO WIN
That’s what we need to do, now — deliver a crushing blow to Iran’s Islamists — to begin to turn the tide in the war for the survival of freedom in the world. Religious freedom, after all, is inseparable from freedom itself, the freedom we enjoy because our fathers defended it with America’s full might, twice in the century just past. Tragically, the odds that we will rise to freedom’s defense again in the next few critical months are almost nil. Some in our military and Defense Department are struggling, against the odds, to speed up the delivery of Massive Ordinance Penetrators (MOPs) capable of destroying Iran’s deeply buried nuclear facilities, but they can’t supply our most critical lack.

Eight years after the bloody attack of September 11, 2001, we still don’t have a commander-in-chief willing to order pilots with MOPs into action. Eight years after 9/11, we still don’t have a president willing to face the scope of this war. Our military is the most formidable on the planet still, but we are forcing it to fight piecemeal wars, tied up in peacetime restraints, with murky goals. Eight years after 9/11, we still don’t have the president we need: a president who will rally the country behind our cause — freedom’s cause — and order our fighting men and women to do everything we must do for the victory we must have.


THE PRESIDENT WE NEED
Discouraged? Don’t be. All is not lost, because those who love freedom have two great trump cards: the fundamental honesty and good sense of the American people, and the back-against-the wall courage of the Israeli people.

Let’s deal with the Israelis first, and face the facts. Israel is a small country; her six million cannot do what our 300 million can and must do. They cannot give Iran’s evil government the overwhelming death blow it merits. But they can forestall total disaster by doing enough damage to Iran’s nuclear sites to buy us a little time, and the odds that they will do just that in the next few months are at least 50-50. They have no choice, if they are to survive. Iran has made it clear to anyone who listens that she will use her nuclear weapons to wipe out Israel first, before she uses them against us, most likely in the form of a terrorist attack. If Israel does act to save herself — along with the home and heritage of the Judeo-Christian world — it will give us a second chance to do what we must do to save ourselves and what is left of the free world. That is what we must concentrate on now: how to rally the American people behind a new leader who will fight for America, and for the survival of religious freedom in the world.

Obama care will hurt seniors

Medicare Part D 'Reforms' Will Harm Seniors
An ObamaCare change will cost taxpayers a bundle and lead to poorer drug coverage...By TOM SCULLY
There is a little-noticed provision buried deep in both the House and Senate health-care reform bills that is intended to save billions of dollars—but instead will hurt millions of seniors, impose new costs on taxpayers, and charge employers millions in new taxes.

As part of the Medicare Modernization Act in 2003, Congress created a new drug benefit—called Medicare Part D—for retirees at a cost of about $1,900 per recipient per year. Many private employers already provided drug coverage for their retirees, and the administration and Congress did not want to tempt employers into dropping their coverage. Actuaries calculated that if the government provided a subsidy of at least $800, employers would not stop covering retirees.

The legislation created a $600 tax-free benefit (the equivalent of $800 cash for employers), and it worked. Employers continued to cover about seven million retirees who might have otherwise been dumped into Medicare Part D.

It was a good arrangement for all involved. An $800 subsidy is cheaper than the $1,900 cost of providing drug coverage. And millions of seniors got to keep a drug benefit they were comfortable with and that in many cases was better than the benefit offered by the government.

But now that subsidy is coming in to be clipped. This fall congressional staff, looking for a new revenue source to pay for health reform, proposed eliminating the tax deductibility of the subsidy to employers. The supposed savings were estimated by congressional staff to be as much as $5 billion over the next decade.

It sounds smart—except that nobody asked how many employers will drop retiree drug coverage. Clearly, many will. The result is that, instead of saving money, the proposed revenue raiser will force Medicare Part D costs to skyrocket as employers drop retirees into the program.

Horrible commander- in- chief

* DECEMBER 2, 2009

Critics From Across the Spectrum Rip Plan
Some of Obama's Most Loyal Backers Denounce Escalation Despite Quick-Drawdown
*
By PETER WALLSTEN

WASHINGTON—A barrage of instant criticism blasting President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan strategy from across the political spectrum signaled the challenges ahead in selling the plan to a skeptical public and Congress.



Many Republicans, while supporting the troop increase, were quick to charge that the timetable for withdrawal would embolden U.S. adversaries. Arizona Sen. John McCain warned that Mr. Obama risked telling the enemy "that you're coming and you're leaving."


The plan appears designed to minimize political fallout—calling for a progress assessment a month after the November 2010 congressional elections and initiating the troop exit the following year as Mr. Obama begins ramping up his own re-election campaign.

But the difficulties ahead for Mr. Obama were evident as many in his own party, including some embroiled in tough campaigns for next year, were quick to express displeasure.

Martha Coakley, front-runner in the special election to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said in an interview that imposing a strict timetable wasn't enough to win her backing. "If you asked me to vote today, my vote would be no," said Ms. Coakley, whose Democratic primary election is next week.


Strategists in both parties said they expected Mr. Obama to easily win votes in Congress for his plan. Support from Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and other military officers will make it difficult for Republicans and many Democrats to attempt to block it.

But the president faces a bigger challenge in persuading the American people to give the strategy time to work. Continuing public skepticism could cloud next year's elections and further erode Mr. Obama's standing with voters, making it harder for the White House to press its domestic agenda.

Obamacare will raise costs

ObamaCare at Any Cost
A bill that raises prices but lowers costs, and other miracles.


We have now reached the stage of the health-care debate when all that matters is getting a bill passed, so all news is good news, more subsidies mean lower deficits, and more expensive insurance is really cheaper insurance. The nonpolitical mind reels.

Consider how Washington received the Congressional Budget Office's study Monday of how Harry Reid's Senate bill will affect insurance costs, which by any rational measure ought to have been a disaster for the bill. CBO found that premiums in the individual market will rise by 10% to 13% more than if Congress did nothing. Family policies under the status quo are projected to cost $13,100 on average, but under ObamaCare will jump to $15,200.

Finance Chairman Max Baucus chimed in from the Senate floor that "Health-care reform is fundamentally about lowering health-care costs. Lowering costs is what health-care reform is designed to do, lowering costs; and it will achieve this objective."

Except it won't. CBO says it expects employer-sponsored insurance costs to remain roughly in line with the status quo, yet even this is a failure by Mr. Baucus's and the White House's own standards. Meanwhile, fixing the individual market—which is expensive and unstable largely because it does not enjoy the favorable tax treatment given to job-based coverage—was supposed to be the whole purpose of "reform."

Instead, CBO is confirming that new coverage mandates will drive premiums higher. But Democrats are declaring victory, claiming that these higher insurance prices don't count because they will be offset by new government subsidies. About 57% of the people who buy insurance through the bill's new "exchanges" that will supplant today's individual market will qualify for subsidies that cover about two-thirds of the total premium.

So the bill will increase costs but it will then disguise those costs by transferring them to taxpayers from individuals. Higher costs can be conjured away because they're suddenly on the government balance sheet. The Reid bill's $371.9 billion in new health taxes are also apparently not a new cost because they can be passed along to consumers, or perhaps will be hidden in lost wages.

This is the paleoliberal school of brute-force wealth redistribution, and a very long way from the repeated White House claims that reform is all about "bending the cost curve." The only thing being bent here is the budget truth.

Moreover, CBO is almost certainly underestimating the cost increases. Based on its county-by-county actuarial data, the insurer WellPoint has calculated that Mr. Baucus's bill would cause some premiums to triple in the individual market. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association came to similar conclusions.

One reason is community rating, which forces insurers to charge nearly uniform rates regardless of customer health status or habits. CBO doesn't think this will have much of an effect, but costs inevitably rise when insurers aren't allowed to price based on risk. This is why today some 35 states impose no limits on premium variation and six allow wide differences among consumers.

The White House decided to shoot messengers like WellPoint to avoid rebutting their message. But Amanda Kowalski of MIT, William Congdon of the Brookings Institution and Mark Showalter of Brigham Young have found similar results. In a 2008 paper in the peer-reviewed Forum for Health Economics and Policy, these economists found that state community rating laws raise premiums in the individual market by 20.9% to 33.1% for families and 10.2% to 17.1% for singles. In New Jersey, which also requires insurers to accept all comers (so-called guaranteed issue), premiums increased by as much as 227%.

The political tragedy is that there are plenty of reform alternatives that really would reduce the cost of insurance. According to CBO, the relatively modest House GOP bill would actually reduce premiums by 5% to 8% in the individual market in 2016, and by 7% to 10% for small businesses. The GOP reforms would also do so without imposing huge new taxes.

But Democrats don't care because their bill isn't really about "lowering costs." It's about putting Washington in charge of health insurance, at any cost.

Obama is wrong on how to make jobs

* NOVEMBER 30, 2009

White House, Business Leaders Split on How to Create Jobs



By NEIL KING JR. and GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration and U.S. business leaders will meet at the White House this week to ponder ways to boost employment. Their ideas, though, don't overlap much.

Businesses of all sizes are brimming with proposals they say would spur economic growth. The most commonly voiced are tax cuts and boosting access to credit.
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The White House, for its part, wants to discuss job growth in the clean-tech sector and shifting some stimulus spending to infrastructure projects. Obama aides are also eyeing a limited range of incentives for small businesses to create jobs.

A 10.2% jobless rate, the worst since 1982, is emerging as the administration's biggest domestic challenge, a threat to the weak economic recovery and Democrats' hold on Congress. But many of the nostrums floated by business would increase spending or reduce tax receipts, unpalatable moves for the White House as the nation's huge deficit becomes a political liability.

Another point of contention: A number of chief executives say the government should clear up uncertainty over health care, energy prices and financial regulations. "Companies large and small are saying, 'I am not going to do anything until these things -- health care, climate legislation -- go away or are resolved,' " said Dan DiMicco, chief executive of steelmaker Nucor Corp.



Across the spectrum, business owners say tax cuts would be the best fuel for job growth. "The first thing they should do is lower the corporate tax rate," said Michael Klayko, chief executive of network supplier Brocade Communications Systems Inc., one of the few companies, even in Silicon Valley, that continues to hire.

Mr. Klayko said big tech companies and other multinationals would jump at the chance to bring billions of dollars in overseas earnings back to the U.S., if the Obama administration offered a tax holiday on repatriation similar to a move the Bush administration made in its second term.

Bill Rys, tax counsel at the National Federation of Independent Business, said his trade group is pushing for a payroll tax holiday.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pitching an even longer list of tax breaks, including a reduction of the corporate capital-gains tax and a permanent elimination of the estate tax.

Write to Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com and Gary Fields at gary.fields@wsj.com

Conservative and liberal lawmakers Wednesday sharply criticized President Obama's plan to start a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011.

Washington (CNN) -- Conservative and liberal lawmakers Wednesday sharply criticized President Obama's plan to start a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in July 2011.

Most Republicans backed the president's decision to send more troops. They claimed, however, he was playing politics by setting an "arbitrary" withdrawal deadline while insisting that any transfer of responsibility to the Afghan government ultimately will be based on conditions in that country.

They also argued he inadvertently strengthened the hand of Taliban and al Qaeda extremists by allowing them to know when a U.S. departure from the war-torn country would begin.

"I disagree with the president's decision to personally relay to our enemies when they can regroup and when they can retake Afghan territory," said Rep. Connie Mack, R-Florida and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"I simply cannot understand and cannot agree with this approach," Mack said, adding that Obama's decision "emboldens our enemies [and] allows them to prepare and plan."

Announcing a firm date for starting an American withdrawal while also saying such a withdrawal depends on conditions in Afghanistan "are two incompatible statements," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Senate Armed Services Committee's ranking Republican.

"You either have a winning strategy ... and then once it's succeeded, then we withdraw or, as the president said, we will have a date [for] beginning withdrawal in July 2011. Which is it? It's got to be one or the other. It's got to be the appropriate conditions, or it's got to be an arbitrary date. You can't have both."

"The president always has the freedom to adjust his decisions," Gates said, adding that Obama has made "a clear statement of his strong intent."

Disastorour foreign policy on all fronts from Richard baehr

The Obama foreign policy disaster plays out on all fronts. The Administration came to office pressuring Israel for a complete settlement freeze, including natural growth,and including Jerusalem. To use one of the Obama team's favorite words, these were unprecedented demands. Israelis across the political spectrum rejected the demands. The US asked the Palestinians and our Arab allies to make a few face saving gestures towards Israel so that the Administration would appear to be balanced- making demands on both sides. The Palestinians and the Arabs gave nothing. But the Administration continued to pressure Israel. In response, Netanayahu got his Cabinet to approve a ten month freeze on new construction in the West Bank, but not including Jerusalem. No other Israeli government had ever made such a concession. Knowing Obama's original demands for a total freeze, Bibi's concessions were naturally unacceptable to the PA and the Arab states. If Obama demands X, why should the Arabs accept less than X? Of course, the Obama team never conducted any of this diplomatic pressuring, diplomatically, in other words, quietly. Instead a collection of Administration figures, from Clinton to Emanuel. made public demands on Israel. After Bibi's concessions, the Administration made a few statements, in essence, confirming prior policy on what a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians would entail (territorial exchanges). The PA's new policy is that without a complete settlement freeze, they will not resume talks. Of course, the whole idea that final status talks could occur, when the PA does not even control Gaza, is ridiculous. The PA has instead embarked on a new policy- legal war- through pushing the Goldstone Report, and getting its collaborationist partners in Europe ,led by Sweden, to enshrine a Palestinian state in the pre 67 borders, with Jerusalem as it capitol. The lesson for Israel of course is that no good deed gets rewarded. Rather concessions and the appearance of weakness , inspire further assaults. Bibi made a conscious decision to try to salvage the US Israel relationship, which has been badly damaged by the Obama team's incompetence and hostility. Turning over strategic policy to political hacks like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, is no way to run a foreign policy. But Obama knows nothing but politics. . And when it comes to Israel , his politics have never been friendly , despite all the liberal Jews who covered for him during the campaign. The President believes the US has been too friendly to Israel, and needs to be more even handed, more like Europe. And Europeans and Arab have seen in this new American attitude, an opening to step us their pressure on Israel even more. All in all, a disaster has occurred, and Israel's international standing is at a new low.
The EU's new gambit: http://tinyurl.com/yjg3d9v
Europe's blind spot: http://tinyurl.com/ykamg4j
Barry Rubin on The Obama team's huge mistakes: http://tinyurl.com/yhb2zwb
Caroline Glick on Bibi's bad week: http://tinyurl.com/yfp4bqa
The United Nations passed the partition resolution in 1947 which within six months led to the creation of the state of Israel. Now the UN meets to mourn that decision and celebrate Palestinian suffering. http://tinyurl.com/yjoyz5o
Daniel Greenfield, AKA Sultan Knish, on the dead end search for peace: http://tinyurl.com/yaowdue
Alan Dershowitz challenges the Goldstone Report. 20% of Democrats in the US House abstained, or voted against directing the Administration to vigorously challenge the report's conclusions and any actions against Israel based on the report . http://tinyurl.com/yhzbclc

3. On Iran, the story is the same. China and Russia will not go along with new sanctions. Iran sticks its finger in Obama' eye and announces it will start ten new enrichment sites and withdraw from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But Barack Obama has not given up on engaging.
Nyet from Russia and China: http://tinyurl.com/yb94lqk
Is Ahmadinejad a loon, a religious armageddon seeking zealot, or a calculating politician. Read this and then decide: http://tinyurl.com/yckwt4q